The United States is expected to overtake Saudi Arabia as the number one liquid petroleum producing nation in the world for the first time in over two decades, thanks to America's fracking boom, Financial Times reported Monday.

According to journalists Ed Crooks and Anjli Raval, this could happen as soon as "this month or next."

The article cites information from the International Energy Agency, which shows that "US production of oil and related liquids such as ethane and propane was neck-and-neck with Saudi Arabia in June and again in August at about 11.5m barrels a day." The article argues, "With US production continuing to boom, its output is set to exceed Saudi Arabia’s this month or next for the first time since 1991."

The explosion is largely due to a "shale revolution," explains the article, referring to the controversial practice of extracting oil from shale using a process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Organizations and communities across the U.S. have pushed for a ban on this extraction method, due to its role in destabilizing the climate, devastating residents near fracking sites who suffer cancer and disease from water and air pollution, marring natural landscapes, and killing wildlife.

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Further

Whew. That was way too close for comfort. And yeah, the country's in a sorry state to have come to this. But not only does Doug Jones become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Alabama in 25 years; his win is a blunt rejection of all the hate-mongering, gay-bashing, race-baiting, sexual-assaulting, serial lying crap of losers Moore and Trump and Bannon and their ugly ilk. Forward to mid-terms. And once and for all, to Moore in all his evil: "Fuck you and the horse you (badly) rode in on."